RZ-100-wt4-E-flipbook-240702 - Flipbook - Page 100
7 | 1990-2000
Employees first
A new beginning
The Polder Model is a model that has been used
Economically, the last decade of the 20th century gets off to a rather
at Rijk Zwaan since the 1980s. The success of
shaky start. A mild recession in the early 1990s causes doomsayers
the Dutch economy, especially with European
to fear the worst, but things are not as bad as expected. After the
unification on the horizon, is being closely
unification of Germany, from 1993 onward, economic growth slowly
monitored by the other European partners.
starts to pick up. The Netherlands is doing very well in European
As for the horticulture sector, the number of
terms. Only Luxembourg’s ratings have a higher average than
businesses decreases in these years, but the total
the Netherlands. In other countries, there is keen interest in the
area of land in use finally increases again. This
Netherlands’ economic model, the ‘Polder Model’, which in macro-
means that there is a certain concentration of
economic terms basically means nothing more than good cooperation
businesses taking place.
between the social partners and the government, and in the case of
individual companies advocates good cooperation between the Board,
One notable development during this period is a
the Supervisory Board and the personnel.
clear shift in the crops that are being cultivated.
The prestige of tomatoes suffered a decline in the
early 1990s, while sweet peppers became more
Extracting seed from tomatoes.
popular with growers and consumers. Another
development that starts to take off during this
period is ecological horticulture. More and more
farms are concentrating on cultivation methods
that use no crop protection or only organic crop
protection products.
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Rijk Zwaan | Moving forward together
